Technology

Google Duplex and Beyond

About Google Duplex, Robots, And Beyond

May 16, 2018 Technology

Last week’s I/O demo, of the virtual assistant Google Duplex scheduling a haircut appointment with a salon over a phone call, was jaw-dropping and nerve-racking at the same time. You can check this YouTube video of the demo if you haven’t. It was an inventive synthesis of natural language understanding, deep learning, and text-to-speech. Though it reminded me of the unseen implications of AI, the demo, in all honesty, was stupendous! The voice simulation, which incorporated the conversational responsiveness of the algorithm, and the emotional connect with the caller on the other side were so convincing it could feel like a natural conversation happening between real people without any way to know the difference, only that that wasn’t the case here. Whilst it’s a great time to see all the varied experiments around automation and machine learning coming to life etcetera, but the implications of them are obscure and might go beyond the role of ‘assisting’ humans. And here’s why.

I was reading Alec Ross’ insightful non-fiction about the permeating effects of digital transformation, automation, and technology, on our culture and jobs, and it’s called ‘The Industries of The Future’. In which, he presents a vivid image of tech innovations, ala Google Duplex, that is replete with industries that would define the employment prospects in a tech-oriented world, where we would deal with subservient robots, big data for ‘predictive analytics’ and commonly use genome sequencing for a deeper comprehension of our biological composition in areas related to preventive healthcare. In a similar vein, in Don Norman’s evocative writing of ‘Emotional Design’, he outlines in an entire chapter on robotics about a future in which humanoid robots would have access to our homes and personal spaces — just in case, this has already happened with a device such as the Roomba vacuum. The concept seems far-fetched today but not if you consider the events of last week’s Google I/O. So then in his book ‘The Industries…’, the author Alec Ross offers a meek reference to artificial intelligence’s debilitating effect on voice-based interactions including a scenario of committing fraud. He says in the book…

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””][…] A downside is the increased risk of fraud. If my voice can be reconstructed in a way that makes the reconstruction difficult to distinguish from my “real” voice, then it opens up new opportunities for fraud — fraud in dozens of languages, no less. In a world with near-universal translation and communication, an ironic side effect may be that we’ll need to be able to look somebody in the eye to believe what he or she is saying.[/perfectpullquote]

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Long Live Google Images!

February 17, 2018 Happenings Technology

There was something wrong with Google Images which I thought needed fixing. I was searching for some images and realized the results were not directly linking to the file like earlier and it opened the corresponding website in a new tab. My reaction was “…huh!?” The results were all broken, at times I couldn’t find that image on the page which left me frustrated. I realized today that Google has complied with the European Commission’s accusation of anti-competitive practices and removed some of its features.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] In 2017, Getty Images complained to the European Commission, accusing Google of anti-competitive practices. Google said it had removed some features from image search, including the “view image” button. Getty Images said it was a “significant milestone” but critics said the move was “a step backwards”. [/perfectpullquote]

They killed the core of the product and unless they revamp or rejig the platform I think Images is headed to the graveyard to join its mates. As part of that deal, Google has begun warning users about copyright infringement which, I thought, was understood that users bear responsibility for liabilities arising from copyright infringement & commercial use of photos. Meanwhile, they also stripped it of its fabulous ‘Search by Image’ function and here we were talking about machine learning for image processing (TensorFlow). Google was a valuable repository of images for reference and so much more to me, and now they have taken that away too. A prime example of how user-centric technology continues to be pushed back to medieval ages.

Privacy by Design Framework - Image

Privacy by Design Principles – An Overview

January 25, 2018 Technology
regulations on how organizations process and store user data have become critical in protecting citizens’ rights to online privacy. in which, the foundational principles of privacy by design are a reference point for designing secure systems & business practices.

The importance of ‘privacy’ has immeasurable ramifications for users of today’s digital age. As tech innovation leads us into 2018, and as we wait in anticipation of self-driven cars, autonomous planes, or intelligent bots using AI and machine learning, the Internet has also awakened to the significance and the criticality of safeguarding personal data, in other words protecting users’ privacy online. For instance, in 2017 there were 1,202 breaches in the 11 months alone, according to a report from the Identity Theft Resource Center. That’s up by 10 percent from the 1,093 breaches recorded during the entirety of 2016. It’s becoming more important for UX consultants and Product Designers to be aware of the ‘Privacy by Design’ (PbD) principles as an essential part of their UCD strategy which is entirely the aim of this article.

These alarming figures of online privacy breaches should drive our collective conscience at influencing authorities to enforce stricter regulations in developing digital data protection standards and making the entire system and practice of data collection safer and transparent, at the same time educating citizens on the practices of safe collection and storage of personally identifiable information and endowing user privacy its due importance because the next data breach could just be an accident that’s waiting to happen. In that regards, measures have been adopted by the European Union (EU) which promulgated a law seeking to protect the collection and export of personally identifiable data thereby giving individuals complete control over data privacy. It’s called the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR which will be enforced by countries across the EU beginning 25 May 2018 although we need to look closely at the foundational principles of PbD.

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Quotes from ‘Steve Jobs – The Lost Interview’

December 7, 2017 Design Technology

Steve Jobs - The Lost InterviewThis is one of my favourite documentaries on Steve Jobs, an interview with the legend who’s at his best reliving his time at Apple, NeXT, and beyond. It’s full of anecdotes from his thought process on product design, and why Microsoft is after all…Microsoft and I thought to reproduce some of his insightful quotes. This interview was conducted by Bob Cringely in 1995, it was lost until the director of the series found a VHS copy in his garage, and released to theatres in 2012.

At a time when technology has virtually seeped into our psyche, this interview brings a tremendous insight as to how far we have come, and especially for Apple as a company as it continues to innovate.

On Becoming a Millionaire at a Young Age

“I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over $10 million when I was 24 and over $100 million when I was 25. And it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money. I think money is a wonderful thing ’cause it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don’t have a short-term payback and things like that. But especially at that point in my life, it was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the company, the people, the products we were making, what we were gonna enable people to do with these products.”

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Goodbye, Dear Mint!

November 9, 2017 Technology

Last week, with a heavy heart, I removed the Mint Bird Feeder plugin from my site which effectively disconnected my site from providing ‘Mint’ the analytics for one final time. I was left with no choice and here’s why I did what I did.

I remember clearly, I was mesmerized by Mint when it was launched in the last decade. I’m talking about a pre-social media era where blogging was the absolute norm in reaching out to the world. But what seemed important to me was the analytics part. This was the time when Google had not yet launched their Analytics product which gave me raw numbers on page views, geographical visits, etc. I had other analytics software at my disposal which helped me feel the pulse of my audience and to gauge the popularity of my writing. So when Mint was developed and launched by Shaun Inman I bought the product without thinking over it twice.

Last week things started going downhill. I wasn’t able to log into my website Dashboard and I began to worry, that’s when I got in touch with Bluehost and asked them to take a look. It was found that the ‘Mint Bird Feeder’ plug-in was the root cause of the issue and they deactivated it pronto. I was aware that the product development of Mint has ceased with Shaun moving on to other ventures and I did not want to compromise the security of my site and so I removed it completely. Furthermore, the developer of the said plugin hadn’t updated it in over 2 years.

Quite frankly, I had a wonderful time with Mint and some third-party plugins (branded as ‘Peppermint’) as long as they lasted. Given the obvious vagaries of the programming world, I took up the challenge of installing Mint and succeeded, until Google Analytics came along and disrupted the fragmented web analytics product industry forever, in the process, creating an entirely new segment of ‘digital marketing’ and ‘SEO’! But I’ll always be thankful to Shaun for giving me an amazing product experience with Mint and Peppermill. Goodbye, and good luck!